Shed Skin is an experimental Python-to-C++ compiler. It can convert many Python programs into optimized C++ code, without any user intervention such as adding type declarations. Its main purpose is to optimize algorithmic-like Python code, by applying advanced global type inference techniques.

If you have heavy processing that is performance critical, a scripting langauge may well limit performance. That hardly makes scripting langauges useless. Typically, a line of a high level scripting language can replace 5-10 lines of C or C++. Since you have to pay for programming (time or money), scripting languages can be an efficient use of programmer time.

Here we a developer giving us a free tool that allows us to write Python and get C++'s performance. You have stated the obvious and he has done something to address the issue.